Sentimental Reasons
by samurai frasier crane
Summary: Here's another prequel kind of thing, about how Sam met Carla and decided to buy Cheers - and the "sentimental reasons" for which he kept it. Set in 1979. I'm still not sure if I like this, but whatever. Basically when I can't figure out to do with any of my stupid original fiction I just write a ton of Cheers fanfic to distract myself. Carla is hard to write!


_Note: It occurred to me after writing this that Cheers was called that before Sam bought it... So let's just say that he bought Cheers because it happened to have the name he came up with. Okay!_

For the past few years – since Anne Marie's birth – Carla had been fighting with Tim for an earlier shift. When Gino came along he started letting her leave at midnight instead of 1am, which helped some, but what she really wanted was the first shift – the one that ended at 10pm. Tim offered her a compromise, the 11pm shift, but it turned out to be even more useless than the midnight one. The bar was near Fenway, and her new hours coincided neatly with the end of the night games. When she left Tim's pub, the streets were always swamped with cars, and she wound up waiting 'til midnight to leave anyway.

It irritated the hell out of her, but at the same time she liked the nightly ritual she concocted, more than she'd admit to herself. Behind the ballpark was a parking lot for the players, and after games the groupies and most diehard fans would congregate over there – waiting for autographs or a quick fuck or something along those lines. Carla didn't care about autographs, and she sure as hell didn't want to do anything that could get her pregnant _again_, but she liked to watch them all leave in their fancy cars, glance their faces through the tinted windows. Those men, the Red Sox – they let her down like every other man she'd known, but they were the only ones she could forgive because they were always there for her too. They screwed up, but then they came back the next day and tried again. It was more than could ever be said for Nick Tortelli. There was something magical about watching them drive off, seeing their realness, if only for a second.

Since Christmas was coming up she'd been working overtime, but still kept the habit of standing by the parking lot for ten or fifteen minutes – even though everybody had already left. She began to realize that only part of it had to do with the players; another part was about the ballpark itself, a kind of cathedral, and a third part was just about her. A moment of peace – maybe the only moment of peace she ever had these days. She breathed in the summer night and shut her eyes and remembered what it felt like to be alone.

She'd been staring up at the lighted stadium, like a bright beacon, and didn't even notice the red Corvette leaving the parking lot until it pulled up beside her. When she looked back she gave a jolt and her mouth dropped open. The driver had rolled down the window and was watching her, a stupid grin on his face.

"Jeez," she breathed. "You're Sam Malone!"

He didn't say anything, just kept staring and grinning like an idiot. She began to feel uneasy. "Uh… What do you—"

"It's _you_," he interrupted.

"What?"

"I know you. You're here every day."

"Oh." Why the hell was he staring at her like that, and what was he so happy about? The Red Sox had lost that night. He looked to her like he was laughing at some secret joke, and her shoulders tensed. "Yeah, I am."

The weird grin kept stretching wider and wider across his face. "Get in the car," he said.

"Huh?"

"Get in."

"What? Why?" Before he could answer she added, with narrowed eyes, "I'm not a groupie."

"I didn't tell you to fuck me, I told you to get in the car."

"But why?"

"Get in!" Now the grin had vanished from his face and the look in his eyes was urgent, even… threatening? She gaped at him. There was no reason to get in his car, nowhere she should be going but home – and the buses wouldn't be running much longer. But for some reason, she reached out and pulled the door open. Maybe it was because he was an athlete, and part of her still thought of him as a hero – no matter how lousy he'd been over the last two seasons, there had still been that glorious double-header in Baltimore. Maybe she was hoping to hear the secret joke. Maybe it was because of the same, unconquerable instinct that had been getting her into trouble for years: that no matter how tough she made herself, she could never figure out a way to say no to certain men. She sidled into the passenger seat, still watching him, unsure if she was awestruck or scared or just confused.

"You got in!" he said triumphantly. "I just wanted to see if someone would do it."

As soon as he shifted gears and started down Yawkey Way, she knew she'd made a mistake. She didn't know how she hadn't noticed it initially, because it explained all of his behavior up to that point.

"Oh, Jesus," she said. "Pull over. You're drunk."

"Naw," he said, grinning again. "Hey, do you wanna know something? No one gives a rat's ass about relief pitchers. It's bullshit to be a relief pitcher. There was this little kid today, he was waiting for autographs—"

"Pull over!"

He swerved between lanes. "Anyway, I'm out there signing 'em, and I get to him and he turns to his brother or cousin or whatever and says—"

"Pull over, you jackass! You're _drunk_. I have four kids and their deadbeat father sure as hell isn't going to take care of them if you kill me!"

"He points to me and says, 'Who is that? Is he on the team?'"

"Sam!" she screamed. It sounded so strange coming from her mouth – because in her head he'd always been _Sam Malone_ or sometimes _Mayday_ when he managed to pitch a great inning every once in awhile. He seemed unnerved by it too; his eyes opened wide, as if he'd had some kind of profound and terrifying realization, and finally – to her great relief – he veered towards the side of the road and parked the car.

"Hey," he mumbled. "I'm sorry. I didn't know you had four kids. I wasn't gonna kill you."

She shut her eyes and took a deep breath. "Just get out," she said. "Where do you live? I'll drive you home."

"I didn't think I was so drunk."

"Sam."

"It's not like I have a drinking problem or anything. I guess I just drank too much tonight. I wanted to see if you'd get in the car. I always see you. I wanted to see if you liked me still, even though..."

He trailed off. Carla glanced at him, leaning back in the seat and staring off into the distance with his brow knitted. He looked like he'd shrunk a foot and aged ten years in a split second, or maybe dropped twenty years and become a little kid. God, was this really happening? She'd never met a ball player before – the closest she'd come was eye contact – and now she was sitting in a car with one who was drunk off his ass and begging for her _approval._ She had no choice but to believe it, because even her dreams weren't this weird.

"Mayday," she said, "shut up. I ain't forgetting Baltimore any time soon."

He smiled, seeming to regain himself. "Yeah! I was great, huh?" His eyes fell on the steering wheel. "Where're we going again?"

"You're getting out," she said. "I'm driving you home. Do you know where you live?"

"Uh-huh. I'm not that stinking drunk. It's not like I have a drinking problem or anything." Despite his insistence, he almost tripped getting out of the car, then caught himself and stumbled to the passenger's side.

"Where do you live?" she asked again.

"Oh yeah. I forgot to tell you." He mumbled an address and she restarted the car, hoping it was the right one. "Hey," he said. "Are you rich?"

She scowled. "Do I look like I'm rich?"

"No. You look like a mess. You look like you got shot at and hit. That's what my mom used to say. Not about me, though, about my room." He affected a high, screechy voice, "_Samuel Adams Malone, you clean up this mess before your father gets home! It looks like it was shot at and hit._"

"Samuel Adams?" she snorted. "Your mom named you after a beer?"

"No," he said, and now affected a mock-pretentious tone, speaking slowly to avoid slurring his words. "She named me after a patttttttttriot. I happen to come from a very intelligent family. Well, some of 'em were intelligent, anyway." He paused, his mouth lolling open as he thought. "How d'you go to every game if you're not rich?"

"I don't go to any games. I get off work at eleven."

"Oh." He slumped against the window. "Hey, do you want to know a secret?"

She said nothing.

"I got drunk today."

"No shit."

"No," he said, the stupid grin returning to his face. "During the game."

"That explains a lot." Sam had come out of the pen in the seventh inning. The first batter hit a fly ball to the edge of the warning track for an out, and then he'd walked Duane Kuiper on four pitches; the only one that came near the strike zone almost hit his hand, and on the bar's TV they zoomed in on him, glaring at the mound as he trotted to first.

When they reached Sam's apartment, Carla dragged him out by the arm and guided him up the steps.

"Hey, thanks!" he said. "Hey, I have a question. You don't think I'm done, do you?"

"Which key is it?" she asked.

"That one."

"Which one?"

"The sillllllllver one," he slurred.

She opened the door.

"Hey, um, you don't think I'm done, do you?"

"If you keep getting drunk during games, you are."

"But what about when I don't get drunk during games?"

"I don't know," she said. "How often do you get drunk during games?"

"I dunno, fifty-fifty. Do you think I'm done?"

She hesitated, flicking on the lights and leading him to the couch, where he flopped onto his back. "Yeah," she said. "You might be. I think it's your release point that's giving you trouble. Have you been screwing with your mechanics lately?"

"Hey, fuck off!"

"You asked!"

"You're not my goddamn coach."

"What did you want me to say?"

"Whaddayou think? You were s'pposed to say no. You're supposed to comfort me. It's what women do."

She scowled again. "It's not what women _do._"

"Yes it is. Like in a war movie."

"This isn't a war movie."

"Oh yeah," he said. "I forgot." He rolled onto his stomach and peered up at her, looking small and pathetic again. She looked away. "I don't wanna be done. I've had a real hard life."

"Yeah, I bet you have."

"How d'you know I haven't?"

"Because you're a big leaguer, you jerk. How hard could it be?"

"Real hard," he insisted. "D'you know what? I ran away from home."

"To play _baseball_."

"Yeah, but I was stuck in the bush leagues for a long time. It stunk."

"Yeah, it must've been fucking tough. How much did you make tonight for beaning Duane Kuiper? A thousand?"

"I didn't bean him! I almost beaned him."

"Okay, how much did you make for it?"

"Y'know what they told me after my first season in the majors? D'you wanna know? They said I was gonna be the closer."

"Oh, _boo-hoo_," she said. "You have to throw pitches in the strike zone if you wanna be a closer."

"They don't trust me. I coulda finished the inning. So I got a stinking base runner. So what? I got an out too. I was gonna get a double play ball if they'd let me try."

"More like a two-run jack."

"Oh, get fucked!" He buried his head in the armrest. "You're s'pposed to comfort me. It's what women do."

"Then why don't you call your _mommy_?"

"'Cos she's dead. I've had a hard life. I bet it's harder than yours."

Up until this point, Carla hadn't been sure what to think of him. He was annoying, definitely, but there was still some charm – maybe just the novelty of him being a baseball player who she'd watched for four seasons and rooted for and loved from time to time. Now her annoyance flared to a fierce irritation that bordered on real rage. He was such a brat. He wouldn't recognize a hard life if it came up and kicked him in the stomach, and he had no right to say that to her.

"You wanna know hard?" she snapped. "My ex-husband left me with four kids. He's a stinking drunk too. I work double shifts at a crummy bar for chump change, and I haven't even sat down since I left this morning. I'd be home right now if I hadn't been too busy being your _chauffeur_ so you wouldn't drive into some tree and kill yourself! That's hard, you dolt. Shut up."

"Oh…" He flopped over again and pointed to an easy chair on the other side of the coffee table. "Hey, sit down, then. D'you want a drink?"

She'd been starting towards the door, but then she caught another glimpse of his sad, stupid face and found herself drawn back into the living room. Keeping her eyes on him, she sat. "No."

"Will you get me a drink?"

"No."

"Hey, will you tell me something? What am I gonna do?"

"Drink some water."

"Not about that." He rose and staggered towards a cabinet, throwing it open and pulling out a bottle of whiskey. "Fuck, I already have a headache."

"That isn't gonna help."

"Yes it will. It always does." He sat again and took a long swig. "Coach says I have a drinking problem, but I don't. Anyway, whaddaya think? Should I settle down?" He giggled, as if this very prospect amused him.

"What?"

"You know, find some girl and marry her."

"I don't know. If you want."

"My wife left me," he said. He fixed her with expectant puppy-dog eyes, as if hoping this would elicit sympathy or bond them in some way.

"Why'd she do that?"

"Oh…" He took another swig of the whiskey, a sheepish grin crossing his face. "I guess because I cheated on her. And 'cos she said I'm a drunk, even though I'm not."

Carla glowered at him. "Men," she said, "are all pigs."

"Yeah, I guess so. I'm sorry 'bout that. I cheated on her a lot."

"Good for her, then." Inwardly, Carla felt a surge of jealousy towards Sam's ex-wife. She must have been pretty tough to leave a handsome baseball star, when Carla couldn't even muster up the courage to leave _Nick_. She'd waited around for him to leave _her_.

"I guess I should get married again if I'm really done. I'll have five kids so you can't make me feel bad about what I said anymore. That's one more than you."

Despite her annoyance, Carla gave a snort of laughter. "Five kids with your genes," she said. "Yeah, I guess I'd feel sorry for you then. They'll be a bunch of idiots."

"Naw, 'cos my wife is gonna be a genius."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, she's gonna be a genius… and a supermodel. With huge tits. And killer legs. She's like, six feet tall."

Carla laughed again. "A genius supermodel."

"Well, yeah, she moonlights as a genius so our kids can have good genes, but her day job is being a supermodel so no one ever finds out."

"Why doesn't she want anyone to find out?"

"I dunno." Sam shrugged. "I guess she's crazy."

"Explains why she'd marry you. Won't that make your kids crazy?"

"No, it's like red hair. It skips three generations, so just our great-grandkids will be crazy. I think. Did I count right?"

"Yeah."

"She doesn't care when I cheat on her. She just thinks it's funny. She's like, 'Oh, he's at it again.'"

"Does she cheat on you?"

"No, never," Sam said quickly. "She doesn't need to, 'cos I fulfill every sexual desire she's ever had."

"If you're making her up, why don't you just make her fulfill all your sexual desires too, and then you won't have to cheat on her?"

"Not possible," he said. "And I'm not making her up. She's gonna show up any day."

"Okay."

"She's always nice to me, even when I screw everything up really bad. She says she still loves me anyway and comforts me like we're in a war movie."

"Hey, Mayday." It felt more comfortable to call him that; she still couldn't wrap her head around calling him Sam, since it made him seem like a normal person and even more pathetic than he already was. "You want some advice?"

"Never," he said. "There's nothing I want less."

"Look for a real girl instead."

He made a face. "Aw, do I have to?"

"If you wanna find her, yeah."

"A real girl," he repeated. "Like you?"

She met his eyes and felt herself flush, hating herself for it. "Naw, Mayday. I don't think you could handle me."

"Probably not. Can she still have killer legs?"

"Yeah, sure." She cast him a furtive, hesitant grin, and he returned it. "I think we can spare you that."

"Okay, good," he said. "I was worried about that when you said she had to be real. Hey, um… Hey, I don't know your name."

"Carla."

"Hey, Carla, do you know what?"

"Do I wanna know what?"

"Yeah, you do." He beamed at her. "I'm gonna buy you a bar."

"Yeah, I bet you're gonna."

"No, I am! I'm gonna buy it so you can work there. The thing is, I've been a really big jerk-off and I think I should buy someone a bar. So it'll be you, since you're the last one I was a dick to. I'll give you whatever shift you want and I'll pay you a hundred bucks an hour."

"Sounds great, Mayday. When can I start?"

"As soon as I buy it. We gotta come up with a name first. Hey, I got it." He hoisted the whiskey bottle to eye level and winked at her. "Cheers!" he cried, and started chugging.

"Oh god, stop! You really are a jerk-off." She pried his hand away, unable to stop herself from laughing. "You're gonna make yourself sick."

"Jeeeesus." He rubbed his head. "Yeah, you were right."

"You'll make a great bar owner," she said, rolling her eyes.

"Hey, I have to meet my supermodel genius crime-fighting wife somewhere. Where will she find me if I don't buy a bar?"

"I didn't know she fights crime too," Carla said.

"Well," said Sam, "she does. She's, like, fucking Wonder Woman or something. At least, she wears a spandex costume like that." He grimaced and clutched his stomach, reaching for a wastebasket near the coffee table. "Hang on, I'm gonna puke."

"Jesus Christ." She grabbed him by the arm again and dragged him to the bathroom, making it just in time. As she watched him, she felt a strange tenderness intermix with her previous disgust. God, she could see why he wanted women to _comfort_ him. She wasn't sure she'd ever met a grown man more in need of a mother. When he finished puking he rocked back on his knees, letting out a groan.

"Here." She passed him a wad of toilet paper. "Wipe off your face."

"Hey, thanks. I think I have a drinking problem. No, I don't."

She grabbed the collar of his t-shirt and yanked him to the sink. "Drink some water."

"Okay." He obeyed, then turned to her with the same stupid grin from before. "Hey, I knew you could do it if you tried!"

"What?"

"Commmmmmmmfort me. It's what women do."

"It's not what women do," she said again, suppressing a dark laugh. She pulled him back into the living room and deposited him on the couch, where he sprawled out with his head hanging off the armrest. "Hey, how am I supposed to get home?"

"Take a cab," he mumbled.

"Ya think I have enough money for a cab? Let me borrow your car. I'll bring it back tomorrow, okay?"

"Naw, that's my 'vette." He reached into his pocket and dug out a wad of bills – at least three times more than she'd need for a cab – and handed it to her. She pocketed it.

"Thanks, Mayday."

"I'll see ya tomorrow."

"Yeah, I guess you will."

"I'll tell you when the bar's ready, okay?"

"Sure thing."

"G'nite Carla."

His eyes drooped shut, and he was instantly asleep. For a moment she stood there, unsure whether she wanted to laugh or just shake her head and walk away. Instead of doing either, she tugged off his shoes and tucked a pillow under his head, scowling down at him the whole time.

"Goodnight, Sam."


End file.
